


Faith is a fine invention

by middlemarch



Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: Biblical References, Conversations, F/M, Marriage, Prayer, Romance, Vignette, star-gazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 01:07:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11680830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She had spent enough time on her knees before she came to Nampara.





	Faith is a fine invention

“I used to count them,” Ross said. For all that he clattered about Nampara, he could be stealthy as a tawny pard when he chose, and he’d come up behind her without her notice. She sensed him, the vital warm length of him breathing against her, even though he’d not laid a hand upon her person. Every time he did, it seemed she felt his palms working beneath the blue ball-gown or crushing it against her so everything was silk, his skin and hers and the worm’s labors woven into a cloud around her, that he parted from her. She didn’t turn, not even her head, and she did not sigh.

“They were brightest when it was darkest, I never paid much attention to them when I was a boy,” he added. He’d do that, tell her what she wanted to know if she only held her tongue, if she didn’t ask one question. He told her everything, in words and with the expression in his eyes and when he was startled and when he could not be. 

“When it was darkest,” she repeated. It didn’t count if it was his own remark she gave him back. He liked that, to hear how it sounded when she took his meaning and then changed it. He liked to be surprised and then preen a little at how he had seen something in her no one else had done. He liked to be the wisest, the greatest fool of Cornwall.

“In the colonies, whichever bloody name they called the place, the sky was littered with stars and when we sailed back and all I could do was hope. That first night, before I’d drunk what Jud left me, the lout, after Trenwith, it seemed like every star in the county was Arcturus and that they’d all come to make a second day for me,” he explained, making the pictures vivid for her, so she could smell the trodden leaves and the earthless salt of the open sea, taste the burning whiskey on her bitten lips.

“D’you like star-gazing very much, my love?” he murmured, willing her to turn into his embrace, to be familiar with him the way he wanted. Not what she wanted, not tonight, though once it had been all she could imagine of heaven, for all it was blasphemy.

“No. I don’t,” she said.

“Then why’re you here and not abed? It’s late, you’re-- you must be tired,” he said. He shifted so there was a space between them, enough for starlight only or a soul or a ghost that was uneasy.

“I was saying my prayers,” she answered. Not primly, as Elizabeth might have, nor solemnly as Verity. She said it without artifice or confession, because it was what she had been doing and to tell him was the least of letting him understand.

He did take her meaning, some of it, for he paused and then kissed her temple, without brushing back her hair, without laying a hand at her waist. This was the Ross she loved best though she dare not tell him so.

“It’s been too long since He’s heard from the mistress of Nampara. It’s good of you,” he said quietly. Demelza let herself lean back then, so he must catch her weight against his own, so his flesh would pray with hers even if his soul was not ready. His chest was bare and she paused in her devotions to consider Eve and how at home she must have been in Adam’s arms, how welcome, hungry and satisfied at once. Ross’s heart beat under her cheek and the stars dimmed around them.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little vignette about stars and the distance that is between Ross and Demelza and how they manage to bridge it. The title is from Emily Dickinson. Arcturus is the brightest star in the northern sky.


End file.
